


Caught Breaths

by misura



Category: Alamut - Judith Tarr
Genre: Multi, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-29 00:42:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6352075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Stop talking, you two. It's rude."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Caught Breaths

Joy and pleasure shared became, impossibly and wholly contrary to logic, doubled rather than halved - _Did you truly expect love to adhere to mathematical rules?_ Gwydion asked, his mind's voice light and teasing, as if recent events had not undone him nearly as much as they had Aidan.

_I do not believe that my expectations were phrased in those exact terms._ Science did not overly interest Aidan, save that which he had an immediate use or need for. Engineering and architecture were capable of holding his attention, for a while; mathematics and physics, less so.

Of course, it did not help that, being who and what he was, the laws of physics applied to Aidan only when he permitted them to.

"Stop talking, you two. It's rude."

"Can I help it that you robbed me of my breath?" Aidan said, putting a plaintive note in his voice which he knew to be beyond Gwydion, who was a diplomat and a courtier on occasions when it suited or pleased him, but who was not, nor ever would be, a singer or an actor.

Maura grinned at him, indicating their offense had been forgiven - inasfar as it had been one. "One weak woman undoing two fine princes? Are you not ashamed of yourself, my lord?"

In another, Aidan might have suspected the use of his title to mask an ignorance of his identity; in Maura, he had come to learn that it meant something else. What, he had not decided just yet.

"Would it be any better, were the situation reversed?" Gwydion asked softly, sweetly. "For two fine princes to undo a single woman - would that not truly call for shame?"

Maura mock-sighed. "Alas, that such a situation must remain hypothetical."

Aidan did not need mind-speech to know what was in his twin's thoughts. He barely even needed the look at Gwydion's expression, for all that he afforded himself one.

"Not so very hypothetical, perhaps," Gwydion murmured, which was, Aidan decided, all the warning the lady could possibly wish for, or deserve.


End file.
